Robert Colquhoun, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Robert Colquhoun

Scottish artist

Date of Birth: 20-Dec-1914

Place of Birth: Kilmarnock, Scotland, United Kingdom

Date of Death: 20-Sep-1962

Profession: engraver, painter, scenographer

Nationality: Scotland

Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius


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About Robert Colquhoun

  • Robert Colquhoun (20 December 1914 – 20 September 1962) was a Scottish painter, printmaker and theatre set designer. Colquhoun was born in Kilmarnock and was educated at Kilmarnock Academy.
  • He won a scholarship to study at the Glasgow School of Art, where he met Robert MacBryde with whom he established a lifelong homosexual relationship and professional collaboration, the pair becoming known as "the two Roberts". He joined MacBryde on a travelling scholarship to France and Italy from 1937 to 1939, before serving as an ambulance driver in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the Second World War.
  • After being injured, he returned to London in 1941 where he shared studio space with MacBryde.
  • The pair shared a house with John Minton and, from 1943, Jankel Adler.Colquhoun's early works of agricultural labourers and workmen were strongly influenced by the colours and light of rural Ayrshire.
  • His work developed into a more austere, Expressionist style, heavily influenced by Picasso, and concentrated on the theme of the isolated, agonised figure.
  • From the mid-1940s to the early 1950s he was considered one of the leading artists of his generation.
  • Along with that of MacBryde, the work of Colquhoun was regularly shown at the Lefevre Gallery in London. At the height of their acclaim they courted a large circle of friends - including Michael Ayrton, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and John Minton as well as the writers Fred Urquhart, George Barker, Elizabeth Smart and Dylan Thomas - and were renowned for their parties at their studio (77 Bedford Gardens).
  • Colquhoun was also a prolific printmaker, producing a large number of lithographs and monotypes throughout his career. During and after the Second World War he worked with MacBryde on several set designs.
  • These included sets for Gielgud's Macbeth, King Lear at Stratford and Massine's Scottish ballet Donald of the Burthens, produced by the Sadler's Wells Ballet at Covent Garden in 1951.
  • During the 1950s their artistic reputation went into serious decline, and their heavy drinking made any serious effort to paint impossible.
  • According to their friend Anthony Cronin they were often close to destitution. Robert Colquhoun died, an alcoholic, in relative obscurity in London in 1962.
  • MacBryde moved to Dublin, where he was killed in a traffic accident in 1966.
  • Their friend Anthony Cronin describes them with respect and affection in his memoir Dead as Doornails.

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